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170 Among the monks, for a few, it is the commencement of an ambitious career that may lead to power and station; for some others, more humble, yet devoutly inclined, it affords opportunity for meditation and prayer, and for growth in personal piety; for the many, it means freedom from military service and taxation, and escape from bodily punishment; for all, both monks and nuns, it is a sure refuge from poverty and want, a shelter for solitary or improvident old age.

The secular, married, or white clergy form the sacerdotal body; until recently it has been, by law as well as by practice, a close, hereditary corporation, a tribe, like that of Levi, consecrated to the service of the altar. This peculiarity of its condition arose by degrees, as a necessary consequence of serfdom and of the ancient constitution of society. The serf, bound to the soil, was prohibited from entering the Church, as, by so doing, he defrauded his master of his toil; and the noble proprietor was debarred, under penalty of the loss of his estates and of the privileges of his rank; the clergy could, therefore, be recruited only from among those of its own class, and a separate clerical body was thus gradually formed, bound to the altar, as the peasant was bound to the land. Sons of priests were compelled to attend the parish schools, and parish offices were filled by graduates of these schools. Custom, and Church law, had made marriage a condition of ordination, and as neither sons nor daughters of popes could marry out of the class to which they belonged, intermarriage of one with the other became obligatory, and this clerical class was thus further transformed, by degrees, into a distinct and special caste. The necessity for the existence of this peculiar order of things disappeared with the causes which gave rise to it. In 1861, serfdom was abolished; three years later, the ranks of the